By Allan Fox: WBA ‘regular’ middleweight champion Daniel Jacobs is using the gym of Andre Ward’s trainer Virgil Hunter in Hayward, California to get ready for his fight on March 18 against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs) on HBO pay-per-view.
Hunter feels that Golovkin has never been in the ring with anyone at the pro level with the talent of the 29-year-old Jacobs, and he feels that anything can happen in this fight. Hunter notes that on paper, Jacobs is the underdog to Triple G, but he still believes that he has a chance of beating the Kazahstan fighter when the two battle it out at Madison Square Garden in New York next month.
Hunter isn’t actively training Jacobs. Hunter is letting him and his trainer Andre Rozier use his boxing gym to get ready for the GGG fight. It’s an important fight for Jacobs, and he wanted to get away from the New York area where he lives so that he could be in a warmer climate and more isolated in the Bay Area. It’s unclear whether Rozier and Jacobs came over to Hunter’s gym thinking he would help out in getting ready for the fight by giving training tips.
It doesn’t look like Hunter is taking an active role in helping with the training of Jacobs though. That’s too bad because Hunter might have some useful ideas that Jacobs could employ against the 34-year-old Golovkin. But then again, there might not be anything that Hunter has his knowledge base that will help Jacobs overcome the very real threat from Golovkin.
Hunter’s fighter Andre Ward beat light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev last November by using a great of wrestling and mauling for the last 9 rounds of the fight after Ward was knocked down in round 2. Clinching and wrestling doesn’t work against Golovkin though. That’s been tried by a number of Golovkin’s past opponents, and he was able to nullify that game plan.
Hunter would need to come up with a variety of different plans for Jacobs to use for him to have a chance of beating Golovkin. if Plan-A for Jacobs is to grab and wrestle Golovkin, then I don’t think that’s going to work. Hunter’s Plan-B for Jacobs would need to be more brilliant than just having him turn the Golovkin fight into a stand-up wrestling match like we saw with Ward against Kovalev.
“You’ve got a formidable opponent in GGG, but he does have some attributes that Golovkin might not have seen in the pros his extensive amateur career,” said Hunter to Fighthub.com. “I’m sure he’s seen bits and pieces of it. He does have athleticism, speed, he can punch. He can make it interesting. On paper, you would say Golovkin. It could be a fight where you expect Golovkin to win, but anything can happen. if you look at the [Peter] Quillin fight. Things happen real quick. I think the best I can say is he’s more formidable than anybody he’s faced as a pro,” said Hunter.
Jacobs does have some good punching power that could give Golovkin some issues, but he’s not the hardest puncher than he’s faced. Golovkin has faced some very big punchers during his pro career with good chins. Jacobs’ chin isn’t that good or least hasn’t been in the past.
Hunter isn’t saying whether Jacobs should focus on trying to use his boxing skills against Golovkin. He’s talking about his power and athleticism.
If Jacobs is just going to try and power Golovkin out of there, then he could get caught in a war. That’s not a place where Jacobs needs to be. He’s not shown in the past that he was equipped to win a war. Jacobs is more of a single shot power puncher that bombs out guys that have been out of his league. Now that Jacobs is facing someone that is in his league, we don’t know how he’s going to react in this fight.
When asked whether it would be a good idea for Jacobs to attack Golovkin immediately in the 1st round with an all-out assault, Hunter said, “That’s a possibility, but you don’t want to be careless either early in a fight, so it could unfold a number of ways. I think when you get right to it, both men are vulnerable. You’re still cold. I don’t care how you warm up. You’re still cold until you start taking punches. I wouldn’t advise my guy to go out and just rock-em, sock’em, because anything can happen. But he [Jacobs] has the attributes to make it an interesting fight. It just depends on where his head is. What people should remember is this is not the same kid [that lost to Dmitri Pirog]. If his mind is in the right place that night, he might not feel nothing. He might not feel a thing,” said Hunter about Jacobs when he faces Golovkin on March 18.